ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on cultivating abilities of listening, or listen-ability, that emphasize understanding and responding in ways that center what matters to youth. Active listening implies that there is such a thing as “passive listening.” While individualism and modernist discourses of professionalism emphasize listening for “The Truth,” social construction and post-structural theories orient us toward a multiplicity of truths. A narrative approach to youth work involves a more complex understanding of the co-influential relationship between speaker and listener in addition to an emphasis on understanding. As a listening practice, taking notes is a helpful way to keep track of important things that are said. The idea of speaking to listen not only invites us to reimagine the acts of speaking and listening, but it also furthers the notion of dialogue and the generativity of co-construction.
